There needs to be someone with a spine to lead California and build homes. The obstruction must end.

The homeless population needs to start arming themselves. Their government has utterly abandoned and betrayed them. As the article notes, the “shelters,” when they’re offered at all, are little more than rat-infested sewage-filled holding cages. To go into these shelters, families are separated and people are required to give up their pets and belongings. The shelters themselves are in flagrant violation of state laws and face no consequences for it.

These people are homeless because the wealthy in these states have prioritized their own personal profit over the well being of their fellow man. They chose and continue to choose to restrict housing construction that would make it so everyone can afford a place to live. These people are homeless as a direct result of wealthy homeowners voting to put their own profit and property appreciation over the basic housing rights of the poorest among us.

And now they face criminalization and endless sweeps from one location to another. I’m sorry, but at some point, enough is enough. People have a natural moral right to resist flagrant abuse by their government. What can this kind of flagrant state abuse be called other than tyranny? The government long ago enclosed the common lands that provided anyone a place to set up a place for themselves to live. Then it sat back and allowed the cost of basic shelter to rise so high that entire swathes of the population become homeless. Now it wants to endlessly bully these people, making their lives a living hell, forcing them in an endless nomadic wandering from one place to another.

I’m sorry, but this is the exact kind of government tyranny that the 2nd amendment is theoretically meant to protect people against. The people in these homeless camps need to start arming themselves. History has shown that cops will be much less reluctant to bully poor people when they’re met with armed resistance. If the state, through no fault of your own, has abandoned you and become your enemy, you have an irrevocable natural right to resist that tyranny by force of arms. Every homeless camp in California should be guarded by a local militia of residents armed with AR-15 and similar weapons. Any attempt at sweeping away a camp should be met with with semi-automatic weapons fire. This is the US. Housing is expensive, guns are cheap. If the government has so thoroughly restricted your ability to make a place to live for yourself, at some point you simply must TAKE the space that you need.

The state has bullied these people to the point where arming themselves is now the best option available to them. Yes, they would have to flagrantly violate the law in order to do so, but they’ll have to flagrantly violate the law just to exist anyway. When you criminalize someone simply for existing, you have abandoned the rule of law entirely. And at that point, your laws mean nothing, and all we have left is might makes right.

The homeless need to start arming themselves and protecting their communities with lethal force if necessary. They have a natural right to do so, and they have little to lose at this point. Maybe when the wealthy find themselves neighbors to fully developed shanty towns protected by armed militias, they will decide that they’re willing to finally let the supply of legal housing grow to meet demand.